Fascinating that Bengali in India has now started to borrow the honorofic suffix "jii" from Hindi-Urdu.
What a 180-degree change in fortunes from the early 1900s when a new Hindi register looked to Bengali for inspiration. https://t.co/VcCFPU5RG8
— Indian Linguist (@IndianLinguist) March 28, 2019
I love it when my point is so spectacularly proven. But I find it funny how intense these discussions take considering I prefaced the post with my own thoughts on NawRuz and Persian cultural imperialism.
Yes Islam is vulgar but so is Hindi. Just as obviously Muslim symbols wouldn’t find room in polite society neither would Hindi (hence why English is busy eviscerating it in the Desh).
I find it interesting that none of the Hinditvas condemn my constant insulting of Islam but become hysterical at my criticising of what is an ugly and artificial tongue. Just as I find Liberalstanis to be hypocritical in their silence over Islam’s deeply problematic nature; they have on the flip side these Hinditvas. QeA is probably the prototypical Liberalstani and Nehru the Hinditva; hence why the Subcontinent ended up as the disaster as it was. Both these tribes have been thoroughly colonised and participated willing in the destruction of the British Raj, a wholesale inheritance would have meant a South Asia able to be the light rather than laughter of regions.
The whole idea of the Hindi language was simply to cleanse Urdu of any Muslim association. The language policy has been a complete disaster (language played no part in 1971; I just did a debate on the topic).
It’s neither here or there; it doesn’t matter to me since my own life and choices have been able to traverse the deepening divide fairly easily (the upshot of being half-caste). However the sad bit is that India has lost it’s ur-homeland (Indthings is technically not wrong in claiming that the Vedas weren’t composed in modern day India) and AfPak is becoming a firm reality.
It’s the slow generations but these Hinditvas have driven Pakistan away into the arms of an unwilling Ummah. In that same Ummah Pakistanis will always be second or third class citizens because they’re a bit of a joke. They don’t carry much status in the Muslim world since they aren’t really proud of who they are.
To give an example the Muslim Sindhi people in trying to create a language pride day randomly chose a day in December as Sindhi Cultural Day. With a little thought the Sindhis could have instead started ressurecting the Cheti Chand tradition and actually reach out to Sindhi Hindus (especially their rich diaspora) as a way to strength Sindhi identity.
It’s a sad reality both India and Pakistan have lost out because they have squabbled like silly children, one side insisting on an absurd language and the other on an absurd religion.
I find it heart-warming that no-one agrees with me; it means that I’m actually on to something. The more I live the more I realise just how unique my own perspectives actually and being a child of the divide(s) means I’m never going to think like everybody else or make the same life choices..
I don’t see the point to be so hysterical with respect.
Yes Bollywood is built upon the appropriation of Urdu High Culture.
I do think QeA was wrong in building Pakistan because he did so in the name of Islam however the process was built up by “Hindi nationalism,” which I find distasteful.
Note the distinction between Hinduism and Hindi. One can admire the former while mocking the latter.
India is a complex civilisation but she has no language to express. Just as the Taj is the undying symbol of India so will Urdu be the language of Indic Civilisation.
Butcher it all you want but it has pride of place.
1/3 of undivided India’s population has no connection to Sanskrit. The Muslim and Islamicate population of India will never accept Sanskrit.
It’s all well and good to go on about it but I’m talking about a unified South Asia. When Urdu is disparaged then it stands to reason Sanskrit will be equally rejected.
“How so? Didn’t most of these ‘Hindu Nationalists’ support a united country? Also, you ignore the fact that the British purposefully privileged Urdu over Hindi institutionally, despite the fact that ‘Hindi’ had a wider usage. If anything, it was Urdu that caused this divide.”
What is this Hindi you speak of? Khari Boli, Hindustani or one of the UP dialects?
Hindi is an artificial register set out about in the late 19th century nothing more.
Bharat is not India; it is a part of India.
This is the Hinditva problem that didn’t realise that India now includes this Islamicate culture.
India has spawned two (maybe more children); Bharat, Pakistan and maybe some latent Bengal expression. I should write a post on it…
// Indthings is technically not wrong in claiming that the Vedas weren’t composed in modern day India //
Actually, (s)he is 🙂
// I find it heart-warming that no-one agrees with me //
I agree with you on this particular Hindi-Urdu topic 🙂
the Vedas were composed in the Indus or East Punjab?
All across the Undivided Punjab (45% of which is in India).
Of the Old NW Indo-Aryan janapadas (tribal confederations): gandhAra and kAmbhoja are in Pakistan (though parts of gandhAra also on the Indian side in J&K), whereas madra and kuru-pACcAla in India.
Think about it this way, the Mahabharata war was fought over control of the region around modern-day Delhi, not anywhere in Pakistan. And the earlier dashrAjna (battle of 10 kings) mentioned in RV on the banks of Ravi in E Punjab.
A large part of Western UP (Mathura & Hastinapur) was definitely within the area where some (maybe later) sutras of Rig Veda were composed. The Nadistuti sukta mentions Rivers Yamuna & Ganga. Kuru/Panchalas settled in western UP and the Yadus settled in Mathura. Both were very important clans within the Bharatas.
Ok then I’m completely mistaken; I thought West Punjab had some special role (the Saraswati civilisational complex etc)
Sorry my bad
I’ll get in the ring with you. Hindi sucks. If the goal was to ethnically cleanse Hindustani of Islamic influence, why be so half assed about it? Going down that path, as a native Marathi speaker I could easily complain about having to use way many more Persian, Arabic and Turkish loan words more than I need to* when perfectly good Sanskritic alternatives exist. Most native Hindi speakers aren’t even aware just how much of their vocabulary is drawn from further west. Either go all the way, or don’t bother. Urdu is an aesthetically beautiful language — why mess with it?
The coup de grace? The Hindi word for sugar. WTF. The whole world west of the Himalayas calls it some variant of शर्करा (sugar, sakhar, sucre, zuchero, sukkar etc) thanks to transmission via the Arabs — possibly the greatest noun merchants ever. But for some reason, it’s chini in Hindi… why!?
* Marathi does have its share, mind you, but way less, and they’re optional if you don’t mind sounding like an antiquated prick.
yes thank you I’m writing a post about how Bengal was deeply hurt by Hindi & Muslim imperialism.
The intention of these fact-free posts seems to be to royally piss off just about everyone from all the different cultural and religious backgrounds spanning Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.
It seems Zach’s real purpose is to re-establish Persian cultural dominance over all of Asia. 😛
This comment tells more about the commenter than the post; why get pissed off about something very mundane such as religion or language? if you had been 100 kn east or west, you will be speaking another language.
“why get pissed off about something very mundane such as religion or language”
…. says the Dravidian 😛
+1
“why get pissed off about something very mundane such as religion or language”
…. says the Dravidian ”
I don’t get it? I’m not in south asia so I might be missing something.
Isn’t religion and language (aside from class/caste) the source of most of the problems of South Asia? “Dravidians” (i’m assuming this means south india) don’t seem to be supporting anything but a secular society and don’t seem to back any horse as far as religious nationalism except the freedom to practice it. Don’t live there so has something changed?
You are mistaken my friend.
I live in a world of Persian cultural domination; the Baha’i world.
I once asked a Zoroastrian origin Bahá’í what would happen to Zoroastrian culture if they all became Baha’is. They shrugged (third/4th Bahá’í) and said we have “haft seen”, we have Norouz.
As a Baha’i I believe our Faith will only grow (our vision Is world-embracing) hence I look to the future. Urdu, Hindufication and a unified South asian cultural complex is the best way to prevent the hyper-Persianisation.
I have noticed Hindu-origin Bahais try to assimilate into the Persian complex and the Muslim origin (South Asian) Baha’is do the same but also feel slighted (it’s a complex story).
My point being that Baha’i Faith must only “Hindufy” as it looks East (we must never be iconoclasts and welcome idol worship) but that Urdu will stop Persian in its relentless advance.
In a Baha’i influenced world there’s no reason why East of Herat through to the Pacific, Urdu can’t be a prevalent language (essentially riding on the Sanskritopolis).
Ghar whapsi will never work; there is one religion that will unite us all sooner or later.. but it is how all the world cultures/religion will influence this Baha’i matrix that is the question.
Sometimes the discussions get heated but I feel I have honest to myself about my intentions..
I have Persian patriotism but thankfully I’m not infected with Iranian nationalism.
To TrueEast:
The “Dravidian” quip is meant to be a putdown on Tamil people who say “why does the language and religion matter so much” given the common North Indian belief that Tamils are fanatic about Tamil, against religion.
Tamils are fanatical about nothing (except movie stars). The high Tamil is beyond the grasp of 99% of the population, and most people quickly drop out of learning Tamil after 10-12 grade. Religion does not hold a fanatical hold, but privately, most people are very religious, but the worship is kind of low religion. What is opposed is the idea that Hindi (albeit Sanskrit) is the central communication mode (called Hinditva here) and Hindusthan is the ideal that needs to be attained. This allows a duality, a fealty to rationalism, high Tamil and other concepts, while, going along with Low Tamil and religion on the side. “Hindi, Hindu, Hindusthan” which is widely popular (as Zack sadly finds about after a 100 posts) has no takers in Andhra and below (the same thing cannot be said in Upper Karnataka and Telangana). Confirming to this, the anti-Muslim, anti-Pakistan bend of the comments does not get much play in TN or Kerala, except among the highest castes.
The one thing that is learnt after 30 years on webs is that the Indians who populate the fora (predominantly upper classes and upper castes) are wrong about mundane subjects such as Tamils, Pakistanis, or any thing else, for that matter. That they are wrong is not grasped by Kabir, Zack or Indthings, and results in large 100 post discussions.
We use the word “shakkar” as well. Just saying…
@SP We use the word “shakkar” as well. Just saying…
The beauty of the Hindi language I speak (what some might call Urdu) is its vast vocabulary repository deriving from multiple sources. That being said, I think sanskritized Hindi sounds dignified and elegant if done carefully. I actually think it would be even cooler if we applied the sound change laws that got us our tadbhav words to our Sanskrit vocabulary, although that would remove the benefit of the language being more comprehensible to second language speakers in India.
Hello Belgarion,
Aside from a perceived external requirement/expectation of Hindi to be somewhat intelligible to other language speakers by virtue of tatsama vocabulary and whatnot, internally too it would be difficult to artificially try and elevate native vocabulary (by coining new words that look similar in form to native vocabulary) which in the case of Indo-Aryan languages would fall under the tadbhava category of traditional grammar. The reason is the ceasing of operation of the sound changes that originally gave rise to these speech forms in the current age and rendering them even more difficult to understand than newly introduced English/Sanskrit/Persian words. The situation is probably like most* languages naturally maintain a progressively decreasing memory of trends pertaining to vocabulary and native Hindi vocabulary (tadbhava via Sauraseni Apabhramshas and Sauraseni Prakrit) and its form and nature would be the most ancient in Hindi’s memory and thus the most amorphous and cloudy to modern Hindi speakers.
*Except for some very conservative and extremely centralised languages like French or Tamil which have to artificially keep the boat from sinking all the time. (Tamil for example has an extremely sharp diglossia between a 13th century dialect called High Tamil and the modern spoken-dialect cluster called Modern Tamil or Low Tamil and this kind of an arrangement would mean the end to that language normally but they cleverly teach young children the High Tamil and only High Tamil in schools calling it “Tamil” or “written Tamil” or whatever.)
I dont really get what are we we even fighting about now. I dont think hindi (unlike the 60s or 70s India) is doing any harm to regional language anymore. Its growth in India is not coming at the cost of other languages. The language its cannibalizing is mostly in North (Mathaili, Gujrati, Punjabi) who themselves are not so worked up about it. Most folks in North are completely ok with talking in their native tongue and hindi , just like no one gets worked up about speaking in urdu in Pak Punjab. If that’s what the people of that region want, so be it.
The BJP poster you have linked will not change anything. The BJP bengali wallas want to call folks with the suffic “ji” , let them do that. They aren’t forcing any bengali to do that right? Bongs can go on doing their babu/didi stuff. Why would be bongs so concerned what a party does/says, the one which they dont vote for anyway .
Hindi is usurping Urdu’s rightful place..
It’s the same language. It’s just called Hindi in India and Urdu in Pakistan. In most situations, a Hindi-speaker and an Urdu-speaker understand each other perfectly well. It’s only if someone is using literary vocabulary that things become difficult.
The Hindi/Urdu distinction is mainly political/nationalistic and not linguistic.
Yes and there should never have been a distinction in the first place..
Yeah man, i mean even Hindutvadi get worked up on different stuff, not really on this hindi/urdu stuff. This things are far too “intellectual”. Even on the right wing , everyone uses this mix match of Hindi/urdu/english/native language that, they hardly give any second thoughts on whether they are using “pure” language
I dont think hindi can take urdu place in Bollywood/intellectual gathering , the best it can do is try to carve out a niche for its self (which it had been doing) , just like Urdu cannot take away Hindi’s street cred and the best it can expect in day to day India is having certain urdu words in the mix of a larger “Hindi” discourse.
Lol dude… do languages have rightful places that are asurped by others? Languages live and die by the numbers of their speakers..
Perhaps you are protesting about English asurping rightful place of other languages.. Latin? German? French?
Or maybe what Mandarin does to Wuhan?
I have hard time getting the importance of rightful places… should we have a language committee like French? Even they could not stop québécois with all their disdain.
ji ing has become more frequent among Tamils too.
I agree with you regarding Hindi. My point was that Urdu is just as shallow and is not even evolving unlike Hinglish.
North Indians/ Pakistan
Is have stupid delusions about Hindi/Urdu
(Which I myself carried till some years ago). I got disabused of them after living in the south.
There’s a lot more to Indian languages and literature than Bollywood music.
Like many here I didn’t see the point of this post! Hindi and Urdu are practically the SAME language for 90% of the time. The Hindi that most Indians speak is actually Hindustani. And English isn’t cannibalising Hindi any more than Urdu. From the Pakistanis I interact with (me in Hindi and they in Urdu) and the odd paki news debates I see, it seems English words and phrases are thrown with just as much frequency as in India. And finally India doesn’t need one language to express itself, it’s got 20+. As a Tamilian, I find it equal parts offensive and funny, lol
Is your underlying point over script rather than language?
you are making a false comparison.
The “similarity” between Urdu and Hindi is precisely because the latter stems from the former.
If we were to decide to remove all non-Latin words from English and simply stay in Germanic; it would be a fair analogy or something such..
India requires a cultural language that binds the whole Subcontinent; the writ of Latin & Greek really defined Europe.
when you speak to Pakistanis you are resorting to Hindustani.
It’s like me claiming that I can use the same language to speak to the plumber as I would to HM the Queen. Just because a plumber and HM can have a chat between one another doesn’t mean English doesn’t have both low & high variants.
There is no effort to remove Perso-Arabic borrowings in Hindi, I have pointed out a million times that official Indian broadcasts in Hindi use Perso-Arabic and even European origin words all the time.
The real source of Zach’s frustration is that Bollywood is not Pakistani. The tapasya of Urdu worship has not borne any real cultural fruit.
Keep watching those dramas Zach, maybe you will feel rewarded some day ….
you are imputing my opinions?
why do I care if Bollywood is Pakistani or not; it still appropriates our (Urdu) culture and that is its strength.
Pakistan should do the same with Sanskrit; appropriate away.
I can’t see why Pakistan can’t stage a serial based on the Ramayana for instance. It doesn’t have to be a precise adaptation but even a contemporary one (for instance it can be “Pakistanised” Ravanna can be a Pathan etc)..
it’s only by pushing the boundaries of culture do we get true creativity..
Pakistan cant appropriate Sanskrit because the country was borne out of a supremacist attitude towards the people whose culture was shaped by Sanskrit and other Indian literary traditions. There is a reason why Pakistanis call their aunts khala and their maids maasi.
Speaking of Pathans and Indian epics, it is a bit of an irony that the only major epic literature where the Afghans find a prominent place is via Gandhari (literally of Gandhara) in the Mahabharata.
it’s a bit more complex than that – https://www.dawn.com/news/1147470